Dallas’ Kenny Goss opens up about relationship with George Michael

Kenny Goss was sitting down for Christmas dinner with his brother, his sister-in-law and a close friend when his iPhone rang. The caller ID showed that Melanie, the sister of his former life partner, George Michael, was trying to reach him. He figured it could wait. And then he heard from Michael’s manager.

Michael had died on Christmas Day. He was only 53.

“I was in a zone,” Goss says, admitting he was in a state of shock that seized the moment and hasn’t fully let go. It’s taken awhile to process the relationship that lasted from 1996 until 2011. Sitting in the offices of the Goss-Michael Foundation in the Dallas Design District, with a painting of Angus Fairhurst’s Fata Morgana looming behind him, Goss admits he still listens to “A Different Corner,” a song Michael wrote and released in 1986. Goss calls it his all-time favorite.

“I would not be sitting here with this wonderful life,” he says, not without emotion, “if I had turned a different corner.”

He and Michael never married (though they did exchange rings), but the international press, the tabloid industry in particular, has seized on the fact that Goss was committed to one of Britain’s most famous pop stars longer than anyone else.

Goss keeps an apartment in Los Angeles but prefers his hometown of Dallas, where he and Michael owned a mansion in Highland Park, and where he now stays in a downtown luxury hotel with his beloved Texas Lacy dog, “Dixie Goss.” He and Dixie can free themselves far more easily here, he says, from the white-hot pursuit of the paparazzi.

Goss declined to discuss the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death, such as why the body has yet to be buried. Authorities haven’t issued an official cause of death yet.

“I know nothing about that,” Goss says.

He preferred instead to reminisce about Michael, who had an eerie way of seeing things that turned out to be true. For instance, in one of their last conversations, which Goss says lingered for hours, Michael predicted that Donald Trump would be elected president.

“I told him, ‘Are you [expletive] kidding me?’ ” Goss says. “ ‘There is no way that is going to happen,’ to which George replied ‘Darlin’, I’m sorry, but I really do believe it’s going to happen.’ ” (Until the day he died, Goss says, Michael always called him “Darlin’.”)

Goss brightened when the subject turned to the future of the Dallas art venue they shared, the Goss-Michael Foundation, which began as Goss Gallery on Cedar Springs in 2005 and has remained an edgy cornerstone of Dallas’ contemporary art scene.

“At this point, I don’t see anything changing,” Goss says. “I guess the question is: Do we have the money to continue? Absolutely. And so, it’s not problematic at all. The foundation is not changing unless I decide I don’t want to do it anymore.”

So, yes, the foundation will continue, Goss says, despite the absence of Michael’s largesse. The foundation still enjoys a halo effect since Michael’s death, and Goss says contributions have actually increased. He enjoys the support of Dallas’ most committed art connoisseurs and patrons, and on a social level, he remains in touch with friends he met through Michael. Elton John, for instance, invited him to his lavish Oscar party in Los Angeles. But as Michael would have wanted it, “giving” remains a must.

The foundation’s mission, Goss says, is that “we get money back and that we help people. That was George’s deal.” Goss marvels at how the foundation has already helped young artists with its artist-in-residence program. He cited the growth of painter Neil Raitt in particular.

He takes enormous pride, he says, in the MTV Staying Alive Foundation, for which the Goss-Michael Foundation has raised $8 million over five years through its MTV Re:Define event, whose sixth edition takes place March 24 at Dallas Contemporary.

“We hope to raise another $3 million this year,” Goss says, “and that’s in six years. That’s a lot of money.”

When it comes to philanthropy, Michael, he says, was the trailblazer, selling him on the philosophy that giving back is mandatory. “We always did that in England, and we wanted to bring that to Dallas, and his name helped so much when we were asking people to give. He never understood that. He just wrote huge checks, enormous ones. He gave away tens of millions of pounds to charity.”

He felt embarrassed, Goss says, maybe even a bit ashamed, by the level of success and fame he enjoyed, hence his need to give so abundantly.

Even so, money was always an off-limits subject to Michael. “He just didn’t want to waste time with that,” Goss says, adding that Michael’s generosity helped redefine and refocus his own life.

They differed on the size of the houses they owned, he recalls with a laugh, saying that Michael preferred small houses (Goss did not). To say that Michael was a homebody would be an understatement, Goss says. The singer preferred being home in England in one of his very small homes. He loved dogs, a passion he passed to his partner.

Goss laughingly recalled Michael making fun of the CDs he had in his car, especially soon after they met, when Michael zeroed in on the fact that the Dallasite’s auto sound collection included Shania Twain and Celine Dion but nothing from him.

“Hmmm,” he said.

Goss loved the robust conversations Michael shared with lifelong chums, witty verbal spars that often morphed into comically British arguments.

And perhaps most surprisingly for a pop star heralded for good looks and sexy music videos, Michael never got over feeling self-conscious about his appearance.

Was there ever a moment when Michael broke his heart?

Goss paused and said, “Oh, I don’t know of one. We just had a really good, sweet relationship.” The breakup, he said, was “just what it was. We weren’t even mad at each other or anything like that.”

He can’t even say they grew apart, “nor do I think George would say that.”

Goss says he most misses Michael’s self-deprecating humor, such as his comment about his 1998 arrest in a public bathroom, where he was publicly outed: “The most horrific thing that happened was that I was photographed with my shirt off and I was fat. Can you imagine two worse things than being fat and gay?”

Goss says the only Michael song he wants to listen to these days is “American Angel.” He recalled fondly a song Michael wrote for him, titled “Where I Hope You Are.”

In one stanza, Michael writes:

These days, in so many, so many ways

My life gets bad for you

But your face when you look at me, look at me that way

Tears me in two

Goss says that, when it comes to future relationships, no one can ever replace Michael, who even after they broke up told him, “Darlin’, I want you to meet someone who will love and take care of you.”

“He was,” Goss says with a sigh, “truly the love of my life. And I think I was the love of his life.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 10:11 AM with the headline "Dallas’ Kenny Goss opens up about relationship with George Michael."